About 'small groups' day, 4 March 2017
FINDING MUSIC FOR THE SMALL GROUPS DAY
We shall provide a range of music, but you might want to find your own as well – then you'll be able to use it again.
The NEEMF Bursary Fund sells used music at our workshops, and you may find useful music there at a knock-down price.
Online, the two main sites to look at are IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project) and CPDL (Choral Public Domain Library). Both of them supply downloadable free music, with minimal copyright restrictions. IMSLP has more instrumental music; CPDL is mainly vocal. You'll need to print out the music, of course.
FINDING MUSIC ON IMSLP
Note Although IMSLP music is free, they impose a short delay before you can download it, to encourage you to become a member: that will cost you $22 p.a., which is about £20 this particular day. IMSLP is a wonderful service, so I don't begrudge it.
IMSLP: search by composer
......................
To find all the pieces by, say, Susato, follow links through IMSLP > scores > composers and choose the composer by alphabet. Easy. If you need help in discovering a composer to search for, you can browse the suggestions below or you can look at sites like HOASM (Here Of A Sunday Morning) where there's a useful page on 'The Research Periods' leading you towards different periods – central Middle Ages, Early Renaissance, etc. (http://www.hoasm.org/Periods.html).
IMSLP: search by number
Suppose on the other hand you're not bothered about who wrote it, as long as the music fits the bill. Let's say you want something playable by 3 instruments. At IMSLP you could follow links through IMSLP > scores > instrumentation/genre > instrumentation > chamber-instrumental > for 3 players leading to a list of all the works on INSLP that were originally scored for 3 solo instruments. As the list is alphabetic by title, the first page has many pieces called 'Adagio', 'Air', or 'Almain'. Let's pick the first almain, which is by Charles Coleman. And now you discover you've gone the wrong way, because what you'll find is an arrangement – not the original 3 voice piece, but an arrangement for one treble instrument and lute. But if you move on to the first of the set of almains by William Drew, you'll be luckier: it's scored for three instruments, which is what you want.True, it's scored for 3 viols, and the middle voice is in alto clef, but fear not: in most cases, including this one, the parts include an alternative part in treble clef.
IMSLP: search by work type
Then again, you might be looking for a particular kind of work, such as a chanson, a pavan, or a fantasia.
Go through scores > instrumentation/genre > work types, leading to a page of different types of music, from Adagiettos to Zwiefache. 'Chanson', 'villancico', 'pavan' and 'fantasia' are all included, along with many other genres. Just follow the links.
FINDING MUSIC ON CPDL
Note. CPDL is really quite slow, so be patient.
To find all the pieces by say, Byrd, go to CPDL > Composer pages (the links are on the left). Here you find alphabetic links to composers (or they can be grouped by nationality, though that doesn't mean so much during the renaissance). Finding Byrd, we get a short biography and then a list of music, grouped into sacred, in Latin, sacred in English, and secular. If we choose a piece, say at random we choose The Nightingale, we find a rather messy page containing a link to the pdf file. Sometimes there are several possibilities, edited by different people; and frequently the page includes text and translations.
You can search for music by number of parts, and still better by which voices, such as SSA, which IMSLP doesn't offer (afaik). Go to CPDL main page and look for the the section 'scores at ChoralWiki', then choose Score subcategories > 3 parts. Likewise, from Score subcategories you can choose genres, such as 'chansons' and 'villancicos'. I've made no attempt to compare the coverage of, eg villancicos, between CPDL and IMSLP.
PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS
If you're looking for pieces to work on at the small groups day for a mixed group of voices and instruments, here are some things to think about.
WHO AND WHAT TO LOOK FOR
Regrettably there's nothing like the service offered by YouTube, Amazon, etc, suggesting items you might like based on the ones you've picked so far.
(more to come ....)
We shall provide a range of music, but you might want to find your own as well – then you'll be able to use it again.
The NEEMF Bursary Fund sells used music at our workshops, and you may find useful music there at a knock-down price.
Online, the two main sites to look at are IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project) and CPDL (Choral Public Domain Library). Both of them supply downloadable free music, with minimal copyright restrictions. IMSLP has more instrumental music; CPDL is mainly vocal. You'll need to print out the music, of course.
FINDING MUSIC ON IMSLP
Note Although IMSLP music is free, they impose a short delay before you can download it, to encourage you to become a member: that will cost you $22 p.a., which is about £20 this particular day. IMSLP is a wonderful service, so I don't begrudge it.
IMSLP: search by composer
......................
To find all the pieces by, say, Susato, follow links through IMSLP > scores > composers and choose the composer by alphabet. Easy. If you need help in discovering a composer to search for, you can browse the suggestions below or you can look at sites like HOASM (Here Of A Sunday Morning) where there's a useful page on 'The Research Periods' leading you towards different periods – central Middle Ages, Early Renaissance, etc. (http://www.hoasm.org/Periods.html).
IMSLP: search by number
Suppose on the other hand you're not bothered about who wrote it, as long as the music fits the bill. Let's say you want something playable by 3 instruments. At IMSLP you could follow links through IMSLP > scores > instrumentation/genre > instrumentation > chamber-instrumental > for 3 players leading to a list of all the works on INSLP that were originally scored for 3 solo instruments. As the list is alphabetic by title, the first page has many pieces called 'Adagio', 'Air', or 'Almain'. Let's pick the first almain, which is by Charles Coleman. And now you discover you've gone the wrong way, because what you'll find is an arrangement – not the original 3 voice piece, but an arrangement for one treble instrument and lute. But if you move on to the first of the set of almains by William Drew, you'll be luckier: it's scored for three instruments, which is what you want.True, it's scored for 3 viols, and the middle voice is in alto clef, but fear not: in most cases, including this one, the parts include an alternative part in treble clef.
IMSLP: search by work type
Then again, you might be looking for a particular kind of work, such as a chanson, a pavan, or a fantasia.
Go through scores > instrumentation/genre > work types, leading to a page of different types of music, from Adagiettos to Zwiefache. 'Chanson', 'villancico', 'pavan' and 'fantasia' are all included, along with many other genres. Just follow the links.
FINDING MUSIC ON CPDL
Note. CPDL is really quite slow, so be patient.
To find all the pieces by say, Byrd, go to CPDL > Composer pages (the links are on the left). Here you find alphabetic links to composers (or they can be grouped by nationality, though that doesn't mean so much during the renaissance). Finding Byrd, we get a short biography and then a list of music, grouped into sacred, in Latin, sacred in English, and secular. If we choose a piece, say at random we choose The Nightingale, we find a rather messy page containing a link to the pdf file. Sometimes there are several possibilities, edited by different people; and frequently the page includes text and translations.
You can search for music by number of parts, and still better by which voices, such as SSA, which IMSLP doesn't offer (afaik). Go to CPDL main page and look for the the section 'scores at ChoralWiki', then choose Score subcategories > 3 parts. Likewise, from Score subcategories you can choose genres, such as 'chansons' and 'villancicos'. I've made no attempt to compare the coverage of, eg villancicos, between CPDL and IMSLP.
PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS
If you're looking for pieces to work on at the small groups day for a mixed group of voices and instruments, here are some things to think about.
- Singers like scores, because they can see where they are and they can more easily find their note.
- Players don't like page turns, so if a score occupies more than 2 pages they would probably prefer parts.
- The ranges have to be suitable. For singers who don't have any instrumental experience, there's some advice here (or there will be when I've written it).
- Singers seem to be happy in almost any key, but if you're choosing music for a player they'll be grateful if you don't demand too much. Players of renaissance wind instruments most definitely are not happy in any old key: these instruments were not designed for that, because the concept of 'key' had not been invented. Baroque winds have somewhat more flexibility.
WHO AND WHAT TO LOOK FOR
Regrettably there's nothing like the service offered by YouTube, Amazon, etc, suggesting items you might like based on the ones you've picked so far.
(more to come ....)